LAMP is an acronym for a solution stack of free, open source software, originally coined from the first letters of Linux (operating system), Apache HTTP Server, MySQL (database software), and PHP, principal components to build a viable general purpose web server[1].
The precise combination of software included in a LAMP package may vary, especially with respect to the web scripting software, as PHP may be replaced by Perl or Python.[2] Similar terms exist for essentially the same software suite (AMP) running on other operating systems, such as MS Windows (WAMP), Mac OS (MAMP), Solaris (SAMP), or OpenBSD (OpAMP).
Though the original authors of these programs did not design them all to work specifically with each other, the development philosophy and tool sets are shared and were developed in close conjunction. The software combination has become popular because it is free of cost, open-source, and therefore easily adaptable, and because of the ubiquity of its components which are bundled with most current Linux distributions.
When used in combination they represent a solution stack of technologies that support application servers.
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Michael Kunze coined the acronym LAMP in an article for the German computing magazine c't in April 1998.[3] The article aimed to show that a bundle of free software could provide a viable alternative to commercial packages. Knowing the IT-world's love of acronyms, Kunze came up with LAMP as a marketing-like term to increase the popularity of free software.[4] O'Reilly and MySQL AB have made the term popular among English-speakers.[5] Indeed, MySQL AB has since based some of its marketing efforts on the popularity of the LAMP stack.[6]
The scripting component of the LAMP stack has its origins in the Common Gateway Interface protocol that became popular in web servers in the early 1990s. This technology allows the user of a web browser to execute a program on the web server, and thereby receive dynamic as well as static content. Often programmers would use scripting languages such as Perl for these programs because of their ability to manipulate text streams from multiple sources easily and efficiently.
The LAMP stack is widely used because it offers a great number of advantages for developers:
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system kernel. A major emphasis of Linux development is security, which makes it an appealing choice for a web-server application. Like the other LAMP components, Linux is free open-source software which means the source code is provided with operating system, which can be edited according to specific needs. Also, because Linux-based operating systems are Unix-like, a Linux server is more natively-compatible with other server-oriented platforms, such as Solaris and BSD, than non-Unix-like systems like Microsoft Windows.
Apache is a free software/open source web server, the most popular in use.[7]
MySQL is a multithreaded, multi-user, SQL database management system (DBMS) now owned by Oracle Corporation with more than eleven million installations[8].
MySQL has been owned by Oracle Corporation since April 20th 2009 through the purchase of Sun Microsystems [9][10]. Sun had acquired mySQL originally on January 16 2008
PHP is a reflective programming language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages. PHP is used mainly in server-side application software. Perl and Python can be used similarly.
With the growing use of LAMP, variations and retronyms appeared for other combinations of operating system, web server, database, and software language.
The equivalent installation on a Microsoft Windows operating system is known as WAMP with an alternative called WIMP.
The equivalent installation on a Macintosh operating system is known as MAMP.
The equivalent installation on a Solaris operating system is known as SAMP.
The equivalent installation on a FreeBSD operating system is known as FAMP.
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